Aging Alone

Report Finds That

Later Years May Not Be As Golden For Solitary Seniors

Longevity is a mixed blessing for the 8.5 million older Americans living alone, says a new report profiling this vulnerable age group.

The report calls attention to the needs of people who live alone. In particular, it focuses on ``their need for a decent income,`` says Dr. Karen Davis, director of the 19-member Commission on Elderly People Living Alone and chairman of the Johns Hopkins University`s department of health policy and management.

Davis says the demographic and economic profile that emerges from ``Aging Alone: Profiles and Projections`` is one in which ``one-fifth of the elderly living alone, or about 2.6 million, are poor. This is five times the poverty rate of elderly couples and equal to the poverty rate of children.``

The report debunks the impression we`ve been given lately, that all old people are well off, says Dorothy P. Rice, a commission member and professor at the University of California at San Francisco`s Institute for Health and Aging.

``This report shows very clearly that there are large numbers of older people with financial and health problems that are not going to go away,``

Rice adds.

Indeed, the report says the number of Americans 65 and older, which was 12.3 million in 1950, will rise to 34.9 million in 2000 and to 64.6 million by 2030, when the so-called Baby Boomers hit their 70s and 80s, triggering profound changes in society.

``The significance of this report is that it focuses on a subgroup of the elderly population,`` says David Maldonado Jr., commission member and theology professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. ``People are outliving their economic resources and entering old age with little income and even smaller extended families to draw on. And while we are entering the era of the five-generational family, a son or daughter may no longer be able to care for a 95-year-old parent because he or she is old, too.``

Widowed or single women over 75 comprise the largest group living alone, the report says. And among older people who live alone, 18 percent have no one to turn to-even for a few days-for help in a medical or personal emergency.

``These are the elderly most in danger of losing the independence they cherish,`` Rice says. ``It is time policymakers offer a variety of creative housing alternatives and home-care initiatives to help keep these fragile but independent people from being institutionalized during a momentary setback.`` Dr. Judith D. Kasper, author of ``Aging Alone`` and associate director of the commission, says: ``We`re also recommending that every elderly person below the poverty line be eligible for Supplemental Security Income (SSI),``

which is not the case now.

``Our research shows that half of the people now eligible do not even participate because they don`t know they qualify,`` Kasper says, adding that a major educational outreach program is another commission goal.

According to Davis, ``While we talk about welfare reform, no policy attention is being given to SSI, which is supposed to provide minimum income to the elderly poor and disabled.``

Currently, an elderly person living alone qualifies for SSI if his or her weekly income is 76 percent of the federal poverty level, or 96 percent for an elderly couple. Davis and Kasper would like to raise the income level to 100 percent, or $104 a week for a single person and $131 for an older couple. Broadening the SSI cash-assistance program could reduce poverty for one-third of all older people living alone, the report says.

Medicaid health coverage is another area in which the commission would like to see reform. The ``near poor,`` or those who exist on $104 to $156 a week and live alone, are not currently eligible for Medicaid coverage. ``We`d like to see that changed so they can participate on a sliding scale,`` Davis says.

``Aging Alone: Profiles and Projections`` is the fourth in a series of reports underwritten by the nonprofit, philanthropic Commonwealth Fund, which created the Commission on Aging Alone in 1985. -